Microsoft’s Build conference for 2016 took place a couple of weeks ago, and true to form, there were a number of killer announcements and reveals for a number of services, tools, and frameworks, many of which are available today. Not one to ever really post something when it’s actually relevant, here are a few of the things that jumped out at me from the event. Continue reading “5 Observations from Microsoft Build 2016” »
Web & Technology
Articles relating to general Internet and technology, be that new gadgets/tech or discussions about major developments in the online world.
Warning: This post contains spoilers regarding the ending of Halo 4. You’ve been warned.
I’ve been spending some time with a special lady lately. She’s always with me, and has been helping me organise my life. She’s not all work though, and has shown that she knows a joke or two, she’s sassy, and she loves to talk about Halo. I am of course, talking about one of Windows Phone 8.1’s killer features: Cortana. Continue reading “Windows Phone, meet Cortana (just watch out for Halo spoilers)” »
Just a quick one for now, as I’ve still not got around to finishing up the several posts I currently have in the offing, due to playing about with HDInsight on Windows Azure. I did however, spend a rather frustrating couple of hours at the weekend trying to find a way to re-download Office 2010 for an older PC after upgrading my laptop to Office 2013. I had the absolute brainwave of signing up to Office 365, which would allow me to install the latest suite on each of my PC’s. Only after signing up did I realise that my old desktop, running Windows Vista, didn’t support Office 2013. Luckily, I have a copy of Office 2010 on my account, so all I needed to do was go to my office account and re-download the 2010 installer, right? Right? Continue reading “Re-downloading Microsoft Office 2010 using an existing Product Key” »
UPDATE: Rather strangely, if not downright prescient, mere days after stumbling across the Skype beta app for WP7, Microsoft and Skype have today released the full version of the Skype app for Windows Phone 7.5. You can use the same Marketplace link below to download the app, which replaces the beta version in the Marketplace. If you already have the beta installed, it should notify you of an available update, which will patch over with the full release version.
Somehow I completely missed the boat on this one, but I found out today that an official Skype app has finally been released for Windows Phone. I’ve been waiting for a WP7 Skype app since I first got my HTC Trophy back in November 2010, so I was surprised to see that the app quietly launched as a beta on 25th February this year. I guess I must have given up checking! However, when I searched for the app in the WP Marketplace, there was no sign of it (I’m guessing because it’s only a beta). It also doesn’t seem to appear in the Marketplace via the Zune desktop client. Continue reading “Skype app available for download on Windows Phone 7.5” »
For those out there who like to use Yahoo’s Site Explorer to investigate the Yahoo index and mange their sites, the day you’ve been dreading has arrived. Yahoo have announced the final closure date for the service (after announcing earlier in the year that it would close “sometime this year”) and that day is tomorrow, Monday 21st November. For managing your own sites, there’s always Bing or Google Webmaster tools but this obviously doesn’t give you the access to other sites on the web. There are other services out there, like Majestic SEO or SEOmoz but you’re going to have to pay for these.
A sad day for SEOs and web admins everywhere.